I would like to be able to retrieve the Title of a document (found in the Summary Info section) in a directory and display it in place of the actual file name. How can I do this without opening the document?

Do you mean display the name in the title as seen in (for example) My Documents?

ie:
    Word Document
    title: "VB Standards"
    filename: "VBStds.doc"
you want "VB Standards" displayed in the folder (directory), NOT "VBStds"?

If so, then, if possible, it'd be more of a registry tweak if anything I'd think. Then you'd have the problem of illegal characters in the title.

If you just want to create a program that'd show the "title" not "filename", then it should be possible, although I've never seen code to do that in particular.

e.g. I have a Word Document with a file name of 040902.doc. In the summary info the title is "Losses incurred in April". I want to display the title to people not the file name. I would use automation and a loop for each file in the subdirectory. I can do this if I open the document and read the summary info but for obvious reasons I don't want to open each file to do this.

I kept on looking for the title attribute in office documents.

The closest thing I found was at:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q224351

(Q224351)

It has a DLL file that lets you change/view those attributes. So I'd check it out. It should help you do what you need.

Thank you.

  Looks like it will do what I was asking. Most appreciated